Over the past decade, compliant electroactive polymer transducers have emerged from the lab to commercial adoption. Their compliance permits much larger deflections than their piezoelectric predecessors, and enables use in countless new applications.
While many compliant electroactive polymer transducers may last for millions of cycles, the technology is still maturing and some compliant polymers may prematurely and unpredictably fail. A lack of product reliability affects consumer confidence in these new compliant transducers and threatens both early and widespread adoption. Unfortunately, the underlying causes behind the premature failures are not singular, straightforward, or well understood. Techniques that increase transducer lifetime and reliability would be greatly appreciated.